Episodes

Wednesday Dec 17, 2014
Checking Off the Box
Wednesday Dec 17, 2014
Wednesday Dec 17, 2014


Tuesday Aug 12, 2014
STEPS to Safety Culture Excellence Workshop - October 2014
Tuesday Aug 12, 2014
Tuesday Aug 12, 2014

Based on the book, STEPS to Safety Culture Excellence, the authors will lead this workshop and provide a detailed roadmap on how to develop a three to five year safety excellence business plan. This two-day workshop is limited to ten participants. It would be helpful if each attendee read the book prior to the event to escalate the discovery process.

ProAct Safety® recently compiled data on over 1,100 sites that requested our help in improving safety. The commonalities of these sites' issues has led to a new approach to solving safety problems and permanently implementing continuous improvement. The approach includes organizational structure, problem identification, issue prioritization, action plan development, improvement metrics, and a motivational and marketing strategy to ensure sustainability. The process is called STEPS (Strategic Targets for Excellent Performance in SafetySM).
Objectives:
- Develop a solid understanding of a safety excellence strategy
- Learn the leading causes of safety program ineffectiveness and failure
- Examine a standard methodology used by excellent safety organizations to identify virtually any type of safety issue or problem
- Learn to use statistical tools to prioritize issues by their potential impact
- Learn to develop action plans to solve safety problems
- Explore innovative ways to measure success and progress
- Discover how one process can replace multiple programs and allow for seamless transition of focus without causing a flavor-of-the-month culture
Workshop Takeaways - Attendees will be provided with:
- Electronic Materials (Templates) to return to their organization and facilitate discussions for the creation of their unique safety excellence strategy.
- A 60-Minute Recorded High-Level Webinar outlining the key STEPS to Safety Culture Excellence methodologies. This will help convey the messages and build support and understanding for the necessary path forward. Moreover, this can also help during on-boarding of future leaders to provide an understanding of why the strategy was created, furthering the future support necessary as the organization continuously improves safety performance and culture and acquires or promotes new leadership talent.
- Access to Shawn M. Galloway or Terry L. Mathis from 8 am to 5 pm CT during the week by email and phone for one month following the workshop, to help support efforts by coaching and advising through the initial creation of the strategy. If not immediately available, calls and emails will be returned within 24 hours.
- A personalized autographed copy of the book, STEPS to Safety Culture Excellence.
For more information, visit this link.
See you there!
Shawn M. Galloway
ProAct Safety, Inc.

Monday Jul 28, 2014
347 - The Confrontation Calamity
Monday Jul 28, 2014
Monday Jul 28, 2014
Greetings everyone, this podcast recorded while in Toronto, ON. I’d like to share an article Terry Mathis wrote that was published June 2014 edition of EHS Today Magazine. The published article can either be found on the magazine’s website or under Insights at www.ProActSafety.com.
I hope you enjoy the podcast this week. If you would like to download or play on demand our other podcasts, please visit the ProAct Safety’s podcast website at: http://www.safetycultureexcellence.com. If you would like access to archived podcasts (older than 90 days – dating back to January 2008) please visit www.ProActSafety.com/Store. For more detailed strategies to achieve and sustain excellence in performance and culture, pick up a copy of our book, STEPS to Safety Culture Excellence - http://proactsafety.com/insights/steps-to-safety-culture-excellence
Have a great week!
Shawn M. Galloway
ProAct Safety

Monday Jun 16, 2014
341 - Who Should Perform Behavior-Based Safety Observations?
Monday Jun 16, 2014
Monday Jun 16, 2014
Greetings everyone, this podcast recorded while in Galveston, TX. I’d like to share an article I wrote that was published May 2014 in BIC Magazine. The published article can either be found on the magazine’s website or under Insights at www.ProActSafety.com.
I hope you enjoy the podcast this week. If you would like to download or play on demand our other podcasts, please visit the ProAct Safety’s podcast website at: http://www.safetycultureexcellence.com. If you would like access to archived podcasts (older than 90 days – dating back to January 2008) please visit www.ProActSafety.com/Store. For more detailed strategies to achieve and sustain excellence in performance and culture, pick up a copy of our book, STEPS to Safety Culture Excellence - http://proactsafety.com/insights/steps-to-safety-culture-excellence
Have a great week!
Shawn M. Galloway
ProAct Safety

Wednesday Apr 16, 2014
The Confrontation Calamity
Wednesday Apr 16, 2014
Wednesday Apr 16, 2014
The emphasis on the concept of confrontation in safety is epidemic. Consultants, books and articles taut the virtue of teaching workers to confront each other over safety issues. They claim that the willingness and ability to confront may be the key competency of safety. They argue that it must become unacceptable to see a risk being taken and not confront the individual taking the risk.
The basis of this misguided concept goes back to two core misconceptions of safety thinking, (i.e. the idea that the goal of safety is to fail less and that all risk-taking is a matter of worker choice). When one worker sees another being bad there must be a confrontation to make the worker less bad. The worker taking a risk simply made a bad choice and confrontation will result in less-bad decisions in the future. The truth is that safety excellence is about achieving success, not simply avoiding failure and that there are organizational influences that impact workers’ decisions that need to be discovered and addressed if lasting change is to be made.
The alternative to the concept of confrontation is the concept of coaching. Coaching is a way to achieve success rather than simply avoid failure. It involves workers building on each other’s strengths rather than simply trying to correct their weaknesses. It is built upon a vision of success in which everyone helps each other reach a goal. It necessitates a vision of success and helps to identify organizational influences on workers’ behavioral choices.
Confrontation weakens relationships and culture and seldom results in lasting change. Coaching builds relationships and culture and almost always results in improved performance. Workers listen to their allies differently than they listen to their critics. Confrontation creates either enmity within the safety culture or avoidance behavior that has the appearance of confrontation without the reality. Either damages the very fabric of what it is supposed to improve.
-Terry L. Mathis
Terry L. Mathis is the founder and CEO of ProAct Safety, an international safety and performance excellence firm. He is known for his dynamic presentations in the fields of behavioral and cultural safety, leadership, and operational performance, and is a regular speaker at ASSE, NSC, and numerous company and industry conferences. EHS Today listed Terry as a Safety Guru in ‘The 50 People Who Most Influenced EHS in 2010, 2011 and 2012-2013. He has been a frequent contributor to industry magazines for over 15 years and is the coauthor of STEPS to Safety Culture Excellence, 2013, WILEY.

Monday Mar 31, 2014
335 – Who Should Implement Behavior Based Safety?
Monday Mar 31, 2014
Monday Mar 31, 2014
Greetings everyone, this podcast recorded while in Anchorage, Alaska. I’d like to share an article I wrote that was published March 2014 in BIC Magazine. The published article can either be found on the magazine’s website or under Insights at www.ProActSafety.com.
I hope you enjoy the podcast this week. If you would like to download or play on demand our other podcasts, please visit the ProAct Safety’s podcast website at: http://www.safetycultureexcellence.com. If you would like access to archived podcasts (older than 90 days – dating back to January 2008) please visit www.ProActSafety.com/Store. For more detailed strategies to achieve and sustain excellence in performance and culture, pick up a copy of our book, STEPS to Safety Culture Excellence - http://proactsafety.com/insights/steps-to-safety-culture-excellence
Have a great week!
Shawn M. Galloway
ProAct Safety

Wednesday Jan 29, 2014
Coaching Safety: Performance vs. Improvement
Wednesday Jan 29, 2014
Wednesday Jan 29, 2014
The most ineffective safety coaching I have ever seen had some great ideas and techniques, but it was based on a bad premise. That premise was that supervisors and leaders should coach the day-to-day performance of their workers in an evaluative manner. They used some powerful interaction models and evaluative techniques, but in the end, it just seemed like the boss’s opinion vs. the worker’s opinion of performance.
The best safety coaching is based on targeted improvements rather than evaluation. Targeting specific improvements (precautions to take or behaviors that contribute to culture) helps coaching in several ways:
- It creates talking points that are friendly and logical (what we agreed to work on) and not subjective (what the boss does or doesn’t like)
- It creates a clear dichotomy of performance (you either took the targeted precaution or you did not) vs. the boss thinks you did well or poorly
- When targeted precautions are not taken, it fosters a discussion of why and why not rather than a judgment of performance
- It creates a communication atmosphere of adult talking to adult vs. adult overseeing child
- It creates the expectation that safety is about getting better not just staying the same
Safety coaching can be an effective tool for supervisors and leaders when done in this way. When organizations learn how to improve safety, it is an easy and logical step to apply targeted-improvement coaching to other performance issues as well.
-Terry L. Mathis
Terry L. Mathis is the founder and CEO of ProAct Safety, an international safety and performance excellence firm. He is known for his dynamic presentations in the fields of behavioral and cultural safety, leadership, and operational performance, and is a regular speaker at ASSE, NSC, and numerous company and industry conferences. EHS Today listed Terry as a Safety Guru in ‘The 50 People Who Most Influenced EHS in 2010, 2011 and 2012-2013. He has been a frequent contributor to industry magazines for over 15 years and is the coauthor of STEPS to Safety Culture Excellence, 2013, WILEY.


Monday Jan 27, 2014
326 - Teaching Supervisors to be Safety Coaches
Monday Jan 27, 2014
Monday Jan 27, 2014
Greetings everyone, this podcast recorded while in Cotulla, TX. I’d like to share an article I wrote that was published December 2013 in BIC Magazine. The published article can either be found on the magazine’s website or under Insights at www.ProActSafety.com.
I hope you enjoy the podcast this week. If you would like to download or play on demand our other podcasts, please visit the ProAct Safety’s podcast website at: http://www.safetycultureexcellence.com. If you would like access to archived podcasts (older than 90 days – dating back to January 2008) please visit www.ProActSafety.com/Store. For more detailed strategies to achieve and sustain excellence in performance and culture, pick up a copy of our book, STEPS to Safety Culture Excellence - http://proactsafety.com/insights/steps-to-safety-culture-excellence
Have a great week!
Shawn M. Galloway
ProAct Safety

Wednesday Nov 27, 2013
Leading vs. Lagging Indicators in Safety
Wednesday Nov 27, 2013
Wednesday Nov 27, 2013
As more and more leaders and safety professionals realize the limitations of reactive safety, they search for leading indicators to help them manage safety more proactively. This thinking fueled the concept that lagging indicators alone, are not truly representative of safety performance, nor are they predictive or prescriptive.
The first round of so-called “leading indicators” was little more than a measurement of safety-related activities: hours of safety training, attendance at safety meetings, participation in safety programs, etc. OSHA’s crackdown on incentives that could potentially suppress reporting of accidents drove many organizations to base their incentives on these activity metrics rather than simply not having an accident.
When behavior-based safety became the rage, the measurement of behaviors from observations came to be thought of as a leading indicator. As safety culture became a buzz phrase, perception surveys gained in popularity and came to be considered another potential leading indicator. The search for meaningful leading indicators goes on because no one of these has proven adequate in predicting and preventing injuries.
Where none of these alone succeed, all of them together potentially can. A balanced-scorecard approach in which the metrics not only complement, but predict each other has proven quite effective in proactively predicting how to prevent accidents. When you measure how much activity it takes to change perceptions, how much of a change in perceptions it takes to change behaviors, and how much behavior change it takes to change the lagging indicators, you begin to truly measure the effectiveness of safety efforts. Just as balanced scorecards have revolutionized strategic management, with our most successful clients, balanced scorecards for safety have proven to have a transformational impact on safety management. How balanced are your measurements?
-Terry L. Mathis
Terry L. Mathis is the founder and CEO of ProAct Safety, an international safety and performance excellence firm. He is known for his dynamic presentations in the fields of behavioral and cultural safety, leadership, and operational performance, and is a regular speaker at ASSE, NSC, and numerous company and industry conferences. EHS Today listed Terry as a Safety Guru in ‘The 50 People Who Most Influenced EHS in 2010, 2011 and 2012-2013. He has been a frequent contributor to industry magazines for over 15 years and is the coauthor of STEPS to Safety Culture Excellence, 2013, WILEY.

Monday Nov 11, 2013
315 - Measuring Behavior-Based Safety: The Perfect Leading Indicator
Monday Nov 11, 2013
Monday Nov 11, 2013
Greetings everyone, this podcast recorded while in Decatur, AL. I’d like to share an article I wrote, published September 2013 in OH&S Magazine. The published article can either be found on the magazine’s website or under Insights at www.ProActSafety.com.
I hope you enjoy the podcast this week. If you would like to download or play on demand our other podcasts, please visit the ProAct Safety’s podcast website at: http://www.safetycultureexcellence.com. If you would like access to archived podcasts (older than 90 days – dating back to January 2008) please visit www.ProActSafety.com/Store. For more detailed strategies to achieve and sustain excellence in performance and culture, pick up a copy of our book, STEPS to Safety Culture Excellence - http://proactsafety.com/insights/steps-to-safety-culture-excellence
Have a great week!
Shawn M. Galloway
ProAct Safety